Le voleur d’enfants (1906) : trompe-l’oeil médiatique et fausse nouvelle romanesque

Le voleur d’enfants is a novel by Louis Forest, published in Le Matin in 1906. The text stands out for its peculiar form, mimicking the coverage of a major criminal case by the press. Despite being a piece of fake news, the novel does not aim to deceive but rather to entertain by using the imaginary resources of crime and by using the poetic forms specific to the newspapers of the time. In this regard, the text can be analyzed as a fictional equivalent of a pictorial genre aimed at producing a similar effect: the trompe-l’oeil.

On ceramic Dao Guan Hu (Bottom-filled Ewer)

The so-called Dao Guan Hu (bottom-filled ewer), also referred to as Dao Liu Hu (reverse-flow ewer), and Dao Zhu Hu (reverse-filled ewer), is a type of pouring vessel designed with Stevin’s Law, a formula in physics which employs a communicating tube to balance out the equilibrium of the liquid levels via a vacuum lock. The structure has a small hole at the bottom of a ewer, a jar, or a trompe-l'œil figure connected to a hollow tube inside the vessel. The liquid will not leak out when turning the vessel upright after it is filled. The current evidence attests that China started producing such wares in the ninth century during the late Tang dynasty. The production continued throughout the Song, Liao, Jin, Ming, and Qing dynasties, and the products were traded to Europe as export ceramics in the seventeenth century. They were also found on the Korean peninsula as Goryeo celadon in the twelfth century and in addition as Buncheong ware during the Joseon dynasty in the fifteenth century. The blue and white teapots with overglaze decoration retrieved from a shipwreck assemblage near Hội An in Vietnam also testify the production of this type of vessels with the same structure in Vietnam in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In the early eighteenth century, the Meissen porcelain manufactory in Germany copied peach-shaped white porcelain pots with overglaze polychrome enamels from imported Chinese bottom-filled prototypes. Dutch potters also decorated imported white porcelain Dao Guan Hu from China with overglaze polychrome enamels.